From electric school buses to swanky carbon credit platforms, these under 30s are using their talents and ideas to shape the future of energy.
By Amanda Florian, Hank Tucker and Chris Helman
A chemical engineer by training, Brennan Spellacy was working at Shopify when he became enthralled with emerging methods for reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon reduction approaches range from the simplest, like planting trees and driving more efficient vehicles, all the way to the outlandish, such as charring and liquefying biomass then injecting it deep underground, or reacting CO2 with limestone to trap it in “green” concrete.
Instead of focusing his attention on just one carbon-trapping method, Spellacy, 29, landed on an a holistic approach. In 2020, he and over-30 cofounder Aaron Grunfeld launched Patch, a platform for vetting the most effective methods for CO2 removal and connecting developers with deep-pocketed corporations looking to slash their carbon footprint. Last April, they also launched CarbonOS—an operating system used by suppliers of carbon credits like CarbonCure, CarbonBuilt and Noya—to help track and manage the end-to-end journey of projects in removing CO2 from the atmosphere. So far, Patch is helping dozens of companies mitigate over 400 tons of CO2.
He sees it as a generational obligation. “If we look at what Millennials and Gen Z are building right now, how they’re voting and spending their time—it’s clear we’re going to be solving some of the more existential questions of this time period like immigration and climate change,” says Spellacy, an honoree of the Forbes 30 Under 30 2024 Energy list.
To be sure, there’s reason to be cynical. Many purveyors of carbon credits have been defrocked as little more than frauds, such as one-time industry leader South Pole that collected millions of dollars to ostensibly prevent the logging of forests in Zimbabwe that nobody wanted to cut anyway.
Spellacy aims for Patch to be a trustworthy traffic cop on the carbon reduction highway. Backed by investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue Management, Version One Ventures and Pale Blue Dot, Patch has already raised $84 million, and Spellacy says the company is on track to triple revenue this year.
“There’s a lot of problems that have already been solved—they just need to be applied in different ways,” he says. “Sometimes the hubris of driving and creating something really novel actually gets in the way of having impact.”
For more than a decade, Forbes has featured young environmentalists, engineers, policy advisors and entrepreneurs for our annual 30 Under 30 Energy list, with the help of nominations from the public. To be considered for this year’s list, all candidates had to be under the age of 30 as of December 31, 2023, and never before named to an 30 Under 30 North America, Asia or Europe list.
Candidates were evaluated by a panel of judges in the energy sector, featuring Nathalie Capati, a 2019 30 Under 30 lister and the cofounder of Jasmine Energy; Aaron Jagdfeld, the founder of energy tech company Generac; Sarah Sclarsic, cofounder of venture firm Voyager VC; and Dr. Etosha Cave, the founder of chemical company Twelve.
This year’s energy list features 21 first-generation listers, 11 immigrants and 17 people of color out of 46 total honorees, including cofounders.
Entrepreneurs on the list like Atticus Francken, cofounder of Econergy, and Lin Sun Fa and Dwi Sutandar of AeonCharge are taking advantage of the growth of electric vehicles to build multimillion-dollar businesses. Based in Chicago, Econergy helps middle-market institutions transition to renewable energy and has partnerships with numerous school districts or coalitions of superintendents in states like Illinois, Ohio, New York and Virginia. In 2021, it completed the first commercial application of a bidirectional battery to power electric school buses and is in the process of spinning out this technology into a dedicated EV company. Francken, 29, says Econergy is on track to generate $30 million in revenue in 2023, growing seven-fold.
Sutandar and Fa, Indonesian immigrants who came to the U.S. for college at Purdue University, founded Seattle-based AeonCharge in 2020 to simplify EV charging and emerged from Y Combinator in 2022. Their app allows users to reserve and pay for around 78,000 chargers around the U.S. thanks to its integrations with 15 charging networks. The company is currently raising a $15 million Series A round and boasts a $60 million valuation.
Also on this year’s list is Grace Stanke, a 21-year old nuclear engineering student—and the Miss America 2023—who wants to help America transition to zero-carbon energy and thinks nuclear is an option largely overlooked in that transition. Stanke, based in Wisconsin, uses her platform to reach all ages, from curious kindergarteners to senior citizens and politicians. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin in May, and after she spends a year touring the country as Miss America and advocating for clean energy, she has a job lined up as a nuclear fuels engineer at Constellation Energy.
“I am in a career that the average age of most positions is above 40,” she says. “In the nuclear world, we don’t have a lot of young people and we need more.”
This year’s list was edited by Amanda Florian, Chris Helman and Hank Tucker. For a link to our complete 30 Under 30 Energy 2024 list, click here, and for full 30 Under 30 coverage, click here.
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